Active Duty All the Time

Heroes Remember

Active Duty All the Time

Transcript

As an air force base you are on active duty all the time where you're not in army, we used to refer to it as garrison, they wouldn't be out in the field where we were always... our field was our base and that's where we launched aircraft from to do their job and we had to have a certain amount ready to go at all times so we were active combat all the time. We always started a lot earlier as the ground crew because we had to get the aircraft ready to fly and because they were so noisy they didn't want us, we couldn't fly all night unless it was an actual mission but we tried to keep it so we didn't disturb the civilians much and, of course, air force bases were out on, away from the general population so it wasn't too bad. It started out, getting up, going to breakfast, heading to work, getting the aircraft ready and launching all the aircraft or as many missions as we had to do and then recovering them and putting them all to bed and then going home and going to bed and that was basically it. If you had the day shift or night shift, like we had early morning shift and you worked until after dinner and then the other ones started just before dinner and took off late til the last flying day so you usually had two shifts. Whenever they had exercises or max flying things that they had on it was always, you always had a really, it did feel good at the end of the day when everything went perfect and you got all the airplanes away and you got them all back serviceable because you had to have 80 % of your fleet serviceable before you actually shut down for the night so it always felt good when it was over.

Description

Mr. Batt explains the responsibility of the ground crew and how they always had to be ready and available for duty.

Gordon Batt

Mr. Gordon Batt was born November 25, 1945 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. After finishing high school, Mr. Batt enrolled in the air cadets and decided to join active service with the Air Force as a result of his love of flying. He spent a great deal of his military career in Canada, but spent time overseas in France with ground crew operations as an armament systems technician and participated in operations with the CF104, Hercules and Argus aircraft. Mr. Batt participated in a fascinating sport as a sky diver performing with the Sky Hawks in several air shows in conjunction with military service and held rank as a qualified parachutist. This love for sky diving is one of his most memorable accomplishments. After his decision to leave the military, Mr. Batt opened his own retail business and eventually sold that and accepted a position as commissionaire in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

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